It was 1943 and 20-year-old George Russell was making his living playing
drums with Benny Carter's band. ("It was the war years," he jokes). Then Max
Roach came along, and Russell was replaced. "I knew I could never be the best
drummer-I'd just heard the best," he says. Russell turned instead to writing
and arranging and moved to New York.

Roach introduced him to everybody on 52nd Street and Russell became part of
the inner circle that included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles
Davis. One conversation with Davis left him stunned. Russell asked the young
trumpeter about his chief aim in music. "Miles said he was going to learn all
the chords, " Russell remembers. "Well, everyone in music thought Miles knew
how to play all the chords." Most musicians at that time relied heaving upon
arrpegiating to create melodies, so Davis's goal stuck in his mind. "I
wondered how he would go about doing that, and what he meant by it," Russell
recalls.

Russell's wondering led to his famous intuition that every chord had a scale
of unity, or a parent scale. Long about then, he became ill and had to forego
an opportunity to join Charlie Parker's quintet. While hospitalized, Russell
was experimenting with the Lydian scale, a tonal progression that had been
largely ignored since the 18th century. One day he played first the C major
scale and then the C Lydian scale in thirds and immediately realized that the
major scale seemed incomplete and unresolved. By comparison, the Lydian
structure sounded unified with a C major chord, or the tonic C.
For Russell, it became obvious that the "natural" forth of the major scale
prevents it from sounding final. Since the scale does not resolve until it
reaches its tonic major chord, the major scale is marked by a sense of
striving. This is very obvious when the major scale is played in thirds.
Conversely, the Lydian scale sounds resolved when played in thirds because
its raised fourth completes a ladder of perfect fifths. The power of the
Lydian mode, Russell realized, is freedom from time's restraints. The major
scale is in a state of becoming. The Lydian scale already is.
This being-there versus getting-there discovery led Russell to articulate the
Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which defines music as
"cosmic gravity manifesting in the realm of sound." Arranging the tones of
the Lydian scale in a ladder of fifths, the theory goes, creates a unified
tonal "gravity field." Every tone in a ladder of fifths is supported by the
lowest rung of the ladder because the lower tone of an interval of a fifth is
always the tonic of the interval. The lowest tone of a ladder of fifths,
therefore, is the fundamental "do" for the series of tones above it, whether
it is a Lydian scale or the entire Lydian chromatic order--essentially a
ladder of fifths that ascends above the Lydian scale with the potential of
spanning every note on a piano keyboard, or all of equal temperament.
Russell classifies music--or, for simplicity's sake, a melody, in terms of
its relationship to the fundamental "do," which he calls the center of
gravity. The higher the Lydian chromatic ladder ascends, the weaker the
relationships of the tones to the fundamental "do." Melodies like "The Star
Spangled Banner" that stay within the first seven tones of the Lydian
chromatic order of fifths (the Lydian scale) are called "ingoing" and tend to
sound what is traditionally called harmonious. As a composer expands to a
universe that includes all 12 tones of the Lydian Chromatic Scale, the melody
becomes "outgoing" and starts to sound more expansive and less familiar.
Part of what makes Russell's theory so interesting is his contention that
even he most "outgoing" music conforms to the laws of gravity. Although the
relationship may be distant and thus difficult to perceive, the melody always
relates to a tonic. "Just because it's night does not mean the sun is not
still there," goes his argument against atonality. "The sun is still the
center of gravity, holding the planets together." Russell's paradigm is also
intriguing because nothing is ever "right" or "wrong," just justified and
organized. Once composers and improvisers understand the structure, they are
free to choose whether to be ingoing or outgoing or both.
Russell maintains that every piece of music has a tonic and fits into one of
three structures controlled by the laws of gravity: vertical (the melody
relates to each chord), horizontal (the melody foreshadows the cadential, or
tonic station, chord), or supra-vertical (horizontal, vertical, ingoing and
outgoing).

Any confusion fades away as you listen to Russell's music. For the ground
breaking composer of "Cuban Be/Cubano Bop," "A Bird in Igor's Yard," and
"The African Game," theory and composition have become one.
First published in 1953, Russell's book fundamentally changed the nature of
jazz by providing an objective framework for analyzing all music. That
objectivity, Russell contends, empowers creativity. Jazz history ha proved
him right. His first book sparked a revolution of modal improvisation that
influenced the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Art Farmer
and every subsequent generation. Japanese composer, the late Toru Takemitsu,
made his own translation of the book and was greatly influenced by it. Miles
Davis remarked to Russell, "George, if Bird were alive, this would kill him."
As Russell looks to the future, he urges those who would be leaders in jazz
(and, indeed, in all music) to avoid being content with interpreting and
perpetuating the classics. Part of what killed Charlie Parker be maintains,
was frustration that his playing was not evolving. Russell fears that the
commercialism of jazz has made it more difficult for innovators because the
parameters of marketable music have been so well defined by record producers.
"I think we have to try to keep ourselves from becoming mechanical. We have
to fight for our innate essence, keep it alive. I don't know if I've done
that, but in the Concept, I know I've provided a way for other people to
renew themselves."

Ultimately, musicians must achieve a balance between innovation and
marketability, just as the ideal music must, In Russell's view, balance the
"getting there" quality of the major mode with the "being there" nature of
the Lydian mode. In fact, he suspects that higher levels of organization may
dominate other disciplines and life, in general. "You can't get to unity by
just the horizontal force alone. People need unity--to feel in touch with
life, the world, nature." In his view, life and gravity are inexorably
linked. "I don't know specifically how, but I feel it in my soul. It's all
one, anyway. Music should be a part of the whole."